You Can't Please Everyone

Here I sit bleary-eyed for the third straight morning because again I sat up too late to watch a college football game. Actually, this time it was THE college football game—Texas and USC in the Rose Bowl for the national championship. For once, the game actually lived up to all the hype as Texas won on the final play. Scanning the sports headlines this morning, the pigskin pundits' post-mortem on the game gives all the answers as to why Texas won and why Vince Young is the best player in football… and why he should go to the pros early and why coach Mack Brown is a great football coach. Of course, these are the same experts who where saying yesterday that USC would win and why Mack Brown always lost big games. As my Dad says, an "ex" is a has been and a "spurt" is a small stream under pressure; put them together and you have an expert.

I doubt that Vince Young is paying too much attention to the ideas, opinions and thoughts of the experts. In fact, the ideas, opinions and thoughts of other people are never a good basis for making decisions. Why? Because they are always changing; they are always a moving target impossible for us to ever hit. It doesn’t matter what car you drive, what neighborhood you live in, or what career field you pursue, you will never make “them” happy. A line from the old Ricky Nelson song suggests, “You can’t please everyone, so you got to pleas yourself.”

Paul would disagree with that as well. He says that our job is not to please others or ourselves’; we are to please God, “We urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live in a way that pleases God, as we have taught you” (1 Thess 4:1, NLT). Think about it. We know we can't always satisfy others... and neither can we seem to satisfy ourselves! Our ideas, opinions and thoughts seem to change too. What we thought would bring us happiness or meaning or stability or whatever end up failing us. We can’t live to please others or ourselves— so we must please God. In fact, it is when we live to please God that we really also please ourselves and others. That’s Paul’s statement in Romans 14:17-19 (NLT)--

17 For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 If you serve Christ with this attitude, you will please God. And other people will approve of you, too. 19 So then, let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up.